Tag: person of the year

The leaders of the Occupy movement will be building an organization and recruiting new protesters for the next phase of their operation this winter. The protesters also have captured the attention of the entire country, and shifted the national conversation to economic inequality.

And now they have gotten the attention of Time magazine, who named generic “The Protester” as its Person of the Year 2011.

Many people predicted late Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be the 2011 winner. But Jobs was not a contender, according to the Washington Post. He doesn’t have the best history with the magazine. Back in 1982 Jobs believed he was being profiled for Man of the Year honors, but learned that Time had selected the personal computer as “Machine of the Year.” And Jobs considered the article on him “awful.”

The Protester

Time has acknowledged the protests taking place in Egypt, Tunisia and Russia affected their decision. According to

Syracuse.com, Time credits the rise in protests to technology and social media in spreading their cause’s message.Time said the U.S. Occupy movement was started by a couple of magazine editors, a 69-year-old Canadian, a 29-year-old African American, and a 50-year-old anthropologist.

The magazine did pay tribute, however, to Jobs in its “Fond Farewells” section.

John Lassiter of Pixar Animation Studios said Jobs wanted to leave Pixar, which he had purchased in 1986, to return to Apple because the world would be better with the company in it.

“That was incredibly touching to me, and it showed that Steve cared about people,” said Lassiter. “ He knew that his products and technology could improve people’s lives.”

About the decision of “The Protester,” Time managing editor Rick Stengel commented that the award isn’t a “lifetime achievement award.”

Time unveiled the magazine’s perennial Person of the Year on Wednesday, opting to go with “The Protester” as the influential synecdoche of the past 12 months instead of a single individual who made big news this year.

In a run-up to its big reveal, the magazine took a reader poll asking who the general public thought should be the person of the year and — perhaps unsurprising, given the outpouring of grief over his death — Steve Jobs was on the public’s short list.

Jobs, however, was not even a contender for the magazine’s cover.

Time managing editor Rick Stengel told the anchors of the “Today” show Wednesday that the award isn’t a “lifetime achievement award.”

Jobs had a somewhat rocky history with the magazine, as detailed in the authorized biography of the Apple co-founder released shortly after his death. Jobs believed that he was being profiled to be the Man of the Year in 1982, only to find when the magazine published that Time had run a harsh portrait of the then 27-year-old executive and chosen to honor the personal computer as “Machine of the Year” instead.

“They FedExed me the magazine, and I remember opening the package, thoroughly expecting to see my mug on the cover, and it was this computer sculpture thing.” Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson, who used to be a Time magazine journalist. “I thought, ‘Huh?’ And then I read the article, and it was so awful that I actually cried.”

Jobs is not overlooked in the latest issue, however, getting a (very touching) write-up in the magazine’s “Fond Farewells” section, penned by Pixar head John Lasseter.

“I thought of Steve almost as a brother, and he never ceased to amaze me,” Lasseter wrote. “He knew that his products and technology could improve people’s lives.”

As always, TIME’s editors will choose the Person of the Year 2011 (in the Dec. 26, 2011, issue of TIME, on sale Dec. 16), but that doesn’t mean readers shouldn’t have their say. The tallies of our annual poll, below, show which notable people from the past year have received the most yes votes and which have generated the most no’s.

Time’s ‘Person of the Year 2011‘ is the person or thing that has most influenced the culture and the news during the year 2011 for good, for humanity, for homeland or for ill. So, ‘The Protester’ deserves it. Congratulations!